


Set Our Watches Forward Like We're Just Arriving Here

by summerstorm



Category: American Idol 8 RPF
Genre: Gift Fic, Injury, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-14
Updated: 2009-09-14
Packaged: 2017-10-04 17:30:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerstorm/pseuds/summerstorm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"I haven't actually <em>broken</em> anything, it's just a stupid fracture,"</i> or how Kris Allen fractured his wrist and decided to keep his apartment, and also Adam.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Set Our Watches Forward Like We're Just Arriving Here

**Author's Note:**

  * For [annemari](https://archiveofourown.org/users/annemari/gifts).



> Late birthday gift for [](http://annemaris.livejournal.com/profile)[**annemaris**](http://annemaris.livejournal.com/). I fully blame my country for surreptitiously blowing its tendency towards chronic unpunctuality into my being. Besides, I have writer's block. Title from The Weakerthans' _Watermark_.

Kris kind of gets what the press is going for here, for once, which he guesses might be an upside to his situation. It just figures he'd have to break his whole life into pieces to start understanding the ins and outs of a good cover story for a tabloid.

He's sure his divorce factors into his injury somehow, that and the stress of being stalked by paparazzi all the time, but it doesn't seem to have occurred to the press that if he were going to start self-harming, he wouldn't have called a cab into the hospital the minute he managed to get himself up on his feet.

"I just don't get why everyone thinks I did this on purpose," he tells Adam over the phone, after Charles gleefully forwards him a Google alert entitled 'Idol champ takes plunge into massive spiral of self-destruction', elaborating 'Ready to knock his life down one limb at a time'. "I haven't even actually _broken_ anything. It's just a stupid fracture."

"Details," Adam says dismissively. "You just picked a really bad time to succumb to the force of gravity, that's all."

Kris groans, sinking into his couch, trying to hold a can of Coke in one hand and balance the phone with the two available fingers on the other. Thank God he didn't break his thumb. "Technically," he says, "I've been divorced for four weeks now. If this had happened a month ago, I could _maybe_ see how— But at this point it doesn't even count as a freakish coincidence."

"In media time it does," Adam says. "When did it leak, three, four days ago?"

"Five," Kris remarks. "That's almost a week."

"On the dot," Adam says. "Like a bomb. And it's not like you have a better story for them."

Which is true, and Kris sort of gets that, from a marketing angle, maybe. The actual story is really stupid: the label's gotten him this enormous apartment so he can focus on putting the finishing touches on the album and doing preliminary promo for the album and making sure the album doesn't tank. Kris suspects they just think he can't find a place by himself, but whatever.

The thing is, the shower head in his new bathtub has about three million different settings, and he was tiptoeing to get a decent amount of water running when he pushed a high-pressure button by accident, and he slipped and here he is now, waving a cast-bound arm in front of his face like it might pop a mouth out and deliver a message from God.

"Seriously, though, a wrist and two fingers?" Adam asks, for the umpteenth time. "How'd you even manage that?"

"I told you," Kris says, enunciating, "I fell in the shower."

Adam laughs. He just laughs, he doesn't even bother stifling it anymore. Kris should have told him it was serious. Kris should have said something about amputation. Maybe Adam would be more compassionate towards a man about to lose a limb.

"Sorry, I just can't form a realistic mental image of that," Adam says thoughtfully.

"Of me in the shower? Is it really that much of a stretch for your imagination?" Kris asks, and Adam doesn't answer for what feels like a light year. Two weeks ago, Adam would have made a joke about Kris's ass and that one time it accidentally went on display for the entire bus to see, or said something about having worked really hard to remove those particular images from his brain.

Lately, though, Adam just clams up, and Kris isn't sure what's changed. It's not like it started when Kris told Adam Katy had asked for a divorce, or even when Kris stopped wearing his wedding ring, or later on, when Adam helped him pick a lawyer. Kris is aware that's self-centered, maybe, hoping Adam would have started acting weird when Kris became sort of available, but at least it would make sense. It wouldn't be so difficult to wave _that_ off.

"It's probably just too plain and boring," Adam says in a rush, and then, "It could have been such a great scandal if you'd just tried a little harder. I'm surprised there isn't yet a story about how the cast is meant to cover up that you slashed your wrists in an attempt to let go of this cruel, cruel world, with little to no success."

"And that's supposed to help how?" Kris asks, going through the channels on mute. He spots his face on a top corner once or twice. He turns the TV off.

"I don't know," Adam says. "All extra publicity is good extra publicity? Say yay to having your name on every tabloid."

"Yay," Kris spits out unconvincingly, and then someone calls Adam out for his interview and Adam promises to come by Kris's apartment first thing when he gets back to LA. He also promises to XOXO his cast. "That's not actually something you _do_," Kris points out, but Adam's already hung up.

 

*

 

It's not so bad. You don't need a degree in Physics to give yourself a single-handed bath or order Chinese or throw a pizza in the microwave or rerecord bits of songs for a debut album.

If it wasn't for the occasional annoying itch and the thought of all the performances coming up that he's going to have to do _sans_ guitar—which, really, of all the body parts he could have broken—he'd call this a pretty good week, all in all. His album drops in less than a month, and the cast only gets in the way of his promo as far as every single interviewer feels the need to ask what happened, but nothing did, so that particular conversation topic tends to take all of two seconds to die out.

The serious feeling of annoyance only appears the first time he does his single on national television with a backup guitar track. That's when he considers taking the cast off, disregarding all medical advice and plowing through the performance.

"It's just three minutes," Kris says.

"Do you want the two weeks of rehab to stretch into three months?" his agent says, and Kris sighs and puts up with it.

What's really screwed up is he can't get out of anything with this type of injury. He can walk and talk and sing and show up to everything. When he has to catch a plane, the studio adds a guy whose sole purpose is carrying Kris's stuff to Kris's entourage. The guy's nice and all, but Kris feels vaguely embarrassed walking around the airport with his hands free. He doesn't think he's being obvious about it until the guy takes pity on him and hands him his messenger bag, which at least is _something_.

He doesn't want the press to start drawing more ridiculous conclusions, though, so he puts on a bright smile and pretends extra hard that he's fine and he doesn't need a hug or more sugar in his coffee or a therapist, thank you very much.

And then there's Charles, who apparently has nothing better to do than read his every e-mail. Out loud. Over the phone.

"If you have nothing important to say, just hang up and call when you do," Kris says halfway through the fifth piece of rumored crap. "My neck's starting to hurt."

"Oh," Charles says, voice growing louder, "oh, man," and then he's laughing, and Kris has to start wondering if he's somehow moved into a universe where fracturing a bone is some kind of guaranteed riot. "Kris, man, I'm so sorry. I'm sorry you didn't break your arm when you had a wife to take care of it." Charles coughs. "I mean, you."

"It's just a fractured wrist," Kris says, sounding slightly more bitter than he intended.

"Right," Charles says. "Tell me that again in a couple of days."

Kris doesn't, but that's just because he's not about to make an admission of guilt on the mechanics of living on his own with an impeded limb. Besides, he's tired of holding the phone after reassuring half of his extended family that his bones will heal right up, no biggie. He'd have put them on speakerphone, except that somehow makes the voices _echo_ in the completely unremarkable vastness of his living room, whose attempt to look minimalist consists in being half empty.

On the bright side, at least there's nothing for Kris to bump into, or trip on, or fall skull-first over into a coma, and he only has to keep the cast on for another twelve days.

On second thought, maybe he should hire a decorator.

 

*

 

He's already lost half a box of painkillers down the kitchen sink when Adam gets back from New York.

Kris shows up at Adam's new house. He thinks they're still at that point where Kris can show up unannounced, no problem, but Adam looks a bit taken aback when he opens the door, and Kris is tempted to turn around and leg it.

"I almost forgot you can't grow a beard," Adam says as way of greeting, putting on a grin and pretending this is as normal as always.

"Shut up," Kris says, and lets himself in. On his way to the couch, he sees Adam raise an eyebrow, but he doesn't think Adam _minds_ having him here.

Either way, he plops himself down on Adam's couch, right in front of the TV. He doesn't have the arm leverage to change the channel and keep the remote from Adam, so he doesn't bother. He just leans back and groans and mocks Adam for watching teen CW soaps.

"It's not a soap," Adam says, halfway between unconvincing and not even the smallest bit embarrassed, and hands him a beer before sitting down next to him.

They mostly just watch the show, or Adam watches the show and Kris watches Adam, not that he'd admit it. They haven't seen each other all that much since the tour ended, what with their crazy work schedules and all, and Kris is worried that's the next thing that's going to break, their friendship, now that there isn't really much they have to do together, and even less that they'd both want to do.

Maybe that's why Adam's been acting weird lately—maybe he's realized that and is trying to spare them both the misery of a real fallout. It crosses Kris's mind that he should let it happen, if that's what Adam wants.

They swap a few stories during plot lulls and commercial breaks, stuff about crazy PAs and incompetent technicians and people who don't actually process your questions before saying no or claiming they're busy. It's not deep or meaningful, but it's comfortable, which feels like a relief.

"I think I might try the hobo look next," Kris says. "Dirty hair, three-day beard, wearing my pants inside out, that kind of thing."

Adam snorts. "Any reason for that sudden, completely legitimate pursuit?"

Kris tries to make something up, but it's late. "My arm is so freaking sore," he says instead. He almost braces himself for a bad joke about the downsides of self-pleasure before remembering it's just Adam and Adam's been acting weird, anyway.

Kris flexes his left arm, watching the veins in his forearm pop up and holding in a pained groan. Adam looks at Kris's arm, too, and Kris could swear Adam loses it for a minute. Adam's eyes go a little wide and his mouth suddenly stops in the middle of opening, which means flexing a stupid muscle is now one more item in the list of things Kris can't do around Adam anymore—like this is something new, like Kris hasn't worked out around Adam a hundred times in the past few months.

"We should grab lunch tomorrow," Adam says, looking away and breaking the silence. "I wanna see you eat with your left hand."

"That sounds really exciting for you," Kris says flatly.

"What can I say, I'm an easily amused man," Adam says with a grin, but it sounds like something's broken here, too.

 

*

 

They get lunch at a small place near Adam's studio the next day.

"This requires way too much effort," Kris says after his third bite. "I'm losing my appetite."

"That's your fault for ordering steak," Adam says. "I thought this was going to be funny, but it's really just kind of pathetic."

Kris sends him a glare, but Adam shrugs and doesn't lose his amused grin. Kris stares at the knife he doesn't dare attempt to hold, and almost misses the fork vanishing from the other side of the plate.

Almost, because then Adam dangles a piece of cheese from his salad in front of Kris's face, and it's not like Kris doesn't have the reflexes to pick it up with his teeth before Adam even tries to draw the fork away.

Kris hears someone snap a picture on their cellphone, but he really doesn't care.

"Okay, maybe I haven't lost all my appetite," Kris says, chewing.

"You could have grabbed a sandwich," Adam says. "You can still grab a sandwich."

"It's good steak," Kris points out.

"So, what, you just want me spoon-feed you, is that it?"

Kris throws a piece of bread at Adam, mutters at him to shut up. Then, "Actually, if you wouldn't mind, I'm not entirely opposed to that idea," he says, trying to sound as transactional as possible, because it doesn't have to be a big deal. Or a small one. It's just a favor.

"I don't know, steak is a really unromantic thing to feed someone," Adam says, picking up Kris's cutlery anyway. Kris knows Adam doesn't mean anything by it, but Adam loses the smile when he realizes what he's said.

Kris wishes there was a way to stop Adam from clamming up all the time. Their friendship is supposed to be a safe space. They're not supposed to tiptoe around what they do or say or _imply_. They're supposed to be _friends_, no holds barred, no awkwardness and no stupid tension of any kind.

Besides, even with Katy out of the picture, Adam still has a boyfriend, and Kris has to wonder when Adam's relationship became a way to stop himself from thinking other things.

 

*

 

Adam promises him a cup of decent coffee and pulls out a bottle of vodka the moment they get to his kitchen.

Kris came here for the espresso machine, and he wouldn't have asked if Adam had just delivered on the coffee.

"I haven't seen Drake in a while," he says carefully.

Adam chuckles, first, and bites his lip after he says, "We broke up," like he's hoping Kris won't ask any more questions. He also puts the bottle back and closes the cupboard, though, which throws any regrets Kris might have had about saying anything out loud out the window.

He actually considers letting Adam be about this, because it's none of his business, but—but it _is_ his business, and Kris can't leave it like this. "Why?" goes first, and then, "When?"

"Three weeks ago," Adam mutters, making it sound like it's his best _guess_.

"Come on," Kris says, "I have a broken arm here, I can't shake the truth out of you."

"Fractured wrist," Adam remarks.

"Not the point."

"It just didn't work out," Adam says. "We wanted different things."

Kris almost asks what those different things were, but then it dawns on him that three weeks ago was when Adam started acting weird, and Kris knows better than to try to shake that out of him when Kris himself isn't sure what's going on at his own end.

"It just wasn't meant to be," Adam prompts, and Kris nods like that's good enough.

It's really, really not, but he's not selfish enough to put Adam on the spot when neither one of them is ready to face it.

 

*

 

Washing his hair with one hand gets pretty tiring pretty fast. It crosses the line into too much of an effort around the following time Adam gets on a plane, and Kris figures he can get by without the luxury of proper hygiene for a couple of days. His left arm is already sore twenty-four seven without doing anything that would make his right arm sore in a normal situation. He tried to jerk off a couple of times last week and gave up before he even started, and he's beginning to wish he'd let his marriage hang by a thread and fizzle out for another couple of months instead of respond when Katy snapped.

He's not even sure he wants to know what kind of images his brain might conjure up to get him off now.

 

*

 

After two days of dismissing people Kris isn't close enough to take on their offer of help, he's pretty glad to see Adam on his doorway, though not so much that the first thing Adam says after gazing up from Kris's cast is, "I _swear_ I saw a hairdresser's just around the corner."

"Shut up," Kris says, and lets Adam in.

The second thing Adam asks is whether Kris couldn't have asked his maid or someone at Jive or even his handler to wash his hair.

"She already made an attempt on my life," Kris says, and turns his face for Adam to see the cut near his ear.

"Washing hair and shaving require two entirely different sets of skills," Adam remarks. "You laid the wrong task upon her."

Kris doesn't ask, but Adam takes on both.

 

*

 

Kris doesn't mean to do anything that might bring the situation from something he wouldn't let just anyone do to actually intimate. As a matter of fact, he goes for the opposite approach, talking non-stop about meaningless things to avoid uncomfortable silences that might lead to awkward gestures and people saying things they don't mean.

The thing is, he runs out of inanities around the same time Adam picks up a razor, and in some kind of ridiculous impulse, Kris freaks out and grabs Adam's wrist. It's not a strong grip, not even close—it's like he thought himself out of freaking out halfway through it, and wrapping his fingers around Adam's wrist was an unexpected side effect. And it's quiet except for the water running in the sink, and somehow there's eye contact, which, why should that matter, right? It's not like he hasn't looked Adam in the eye dozens of times every day in the past few months.

Adam coughs softly, the picture of composure, and Kris gazes down at his lips, and—yeah, okay, maybe Kris knows where he stands, suddenly, and he has to acknowledge there's a part of him that welcomes the awareness. If nothing else, at least he knows he wouldn't pull away if Adam kissed him.

It seems a little arrogant to assume Adam even _wants_ to kiss him, though, and even if he has at all at any point, it seems unlikely that he'd still want to, that he hasn't talked himself out of it for good. And that's not something Kris could blame him for.

"If you make it look like I cut myself, I will end you," he attempts. It gets a chuckle out of Adam, but it's like freaking dominoes from there.

There's no bleeding or any more broken bones or torn skin, but Kris feels something tugging at his insides, trying to rip him apart. When Adam gets a chair for Kris to sit while Adam washes his hair, Kris takes the chance to calm down, breathe in and lie back and relax, but Adam's fingers are long and solid on his scalp, and when he opens his eyes he can see Adam's face set on this unreadable expression, something between concentration and _abandon_ that shoots straight down Kris's spine and into his dick.

They're close, they're really close, Adam's stroking the back of his neck right now, for Christ's sakes, but Kris wants to be even closer. So much closer than this. Like pretty much no space at all between them, that kind of closeness.

That's not something he expected to realize until maybe years down the line, until it was too late to do anything about it.

It can't be obvious—his jeans are not that tight, and Adam's supposed to be washing his hair, not looking at his crotch—but he has time to notice Adam sneaking a look way beyond Kris's head before he gathers the presence of mind to sling his cast along his lap, cover up.

He knows he's embarrassed and can barely use his right arm and neither of those things is conductive to acting like nothing's going on, but he doesn't know why Adam's doing such a horrible job of pretending he hasn't realized Kris is half-hard and biting the inside of his lower lip, trying not to moan.

Kris has to blink twice when Adam says he's done, like the tap stopping wasn't warning enough. Adam grabs a towel from the counter and almost hands it to Kris before he decides to wrap it around Kris's head himself first, press down to absorb the excess of water.

Kris takes over after a few seconds, stands up.

"I have to go, I have this—meeting with the studio, you know," Adam says.

"Yeah," Kris says.

"But seriously," Adam says, looking a little bashful and letting the adverb sink in like it means something, "seriously, call me if you need anything."

Kris offers a small smile and a nod. "Will do," he says, and lets Adam walk himself to the door.

But maybe it's too late now, or too early, because he doesn't want this—his friendship with Adam, whatever's left in his life of being someone who didn't get recognized walking down the street—to come crumbling down, too, and maybe this is as close as they'll get before they start drifting apart.

Maybe that's something they should talk about.

For now, Kris takes a cold shower, careful not to get the stupid cast wet.

 

*

 

He almost asks once.

It's—obviously he doesn't even come close to asking, but he thinks about it while he's talking to Adam, which is just about the same thing, only not at all. His agent cleared the week for him, since he's getting the cast removed in a couple of days and after that she thinks they shouldn't let him anywhere near a guitar and a microphone until the doctor says he can play, just in case.

He's resolutely ignoring the TV because Adam's on the phone and he can't mock _Gossip Girl_ at Adam if Adam isn't listening to him, so his eyes end up settling on Adam's face and the hand holding his cell, and Kris doesn't actually have the gall to do anything about it, but Adam's knuckles flex and his fingertips tap on the phone when he gets bored and Kris really, really wants that hand somewhere else, and the only other thought on his mind is how much he'd like to punch that slick-haired bastard who's prancing around the screen right now, so basically he's screwed. It's either anger or guilt.

His brain picks guilt for him, but he manages to drag his gaze away from Adam.

Adam chooses that particular moment to end his conversation, and he catches Kris looking away, which isn't really something Kris should be embarrassed about, because he's not a thirteen-year-old girl, even if sometimes it seems like it.

"What?" Adam asks.

"Nothing," Kris says, and then, "Why did you break up with Drake?"

Adam frowns. "Wow, did not expect that question," he says, and Kris shrugs. "It's seriously not a big deal."

"You saying it's not a big deal doesn't actually make it _true_," Kris points out.

"It doesn't need to be made true, it _is_ true," Adam says.

"Adam," Kris warns, and then he rests the cast on the back of the couch and looks at him.

Adam goes kind of still. Kris hears him swallow, and for the longest time he doesn't say a word. "He broke up with me," Adam admits eventually, but it doesn't sound like an accusation, or a mislaying of guilt or _anything_. Kris waits. After a while—it may be a few seconds, it may be two minutes—Adam shuts his eyes tight and says, "I couldn't get over someone else." His face contracts into an abashed, shielded gesture—he doesn't open his eyes entirely, he doesn't close his mouth.

Kris really, really wants to kiss him, but Adam's the one who figures out that's the only possible step forward and leans in first.

 

*

 

Kris isn't sure how he ends up shirtless on Adam's bed with his cast on a pillow and Adam propped up on his fists over him and fully clothed, but he can hear teenage shrieks coming from the other room, so at least he knows he's not the only one who hasn't thought this through.

"How's your left hand?" Adam asks quietly, licking the underside of Kris's ear.

"Completely useless," Kris says.

Adam tsks, first, then says, "I hope I'm not just acting as a replacement for your incapacitated limbs here," and it's like this pool of pieces in Kris's head stops being in shambles and puts itself together instead.

Kris bites his lip and lets his hips buck up when one of Adam's hands flutters down his thigh. "You're not," Kris says, holding onto the shoulder of Adam's shirt with his single functional hand, tugging at the fabric. "You are so not—" he repeats, shaking his head, and stops when Adam's teeth catch his tongue. This says it better, anyway, and more convincingly than Kris ever could in words.

Adam takes his time letting the message sink in, thoroughly opening Kris's mouth up underneath his, but after a while he sits back, a knee at each side of Kris's thighs, and takes the shirt off himself.

Instead of looking at Adam's bare skin, of taking the image in now that the situation calls for it, Kris finds himself struck by how happy Adam looks all of a sudden, how _unburdened_, like Kris hasn't seen him look since before he learned about the divorce, maybe even longer.

Which says a lot about a lot of things, Kris realizes, feeling a bundle of expectation light up in the pit of his stomach. It turns and turns when he pulls Adam down for an open-mouthed kiss, spreads over like wildfire, makes him dizzy.

"I didn't," Adam says, gasping when Kris runs his nails down his back, "I didn't want to do anything. In case it was—too soon, or too weird, or too immoral." There's something of that in the way Adam shoves Kris's jeans and boxers off his hips with a determination that seems hesitant, not whole. There's something of that there even when Adam wraps his hand around Kris's dick without anything even remotely close to ado.

"I don't think your standards apply here," Kris says, thrusting into Adam's hand.

"I figured," Adam says. He runs his thumb along Kris's length, then presses it across his slit, spreading pre-come over the head and slicking up Kris's cock on the downstroke.

Kris works his left arm pretty gracelessly between their bodies, gets Adam's pants open and pushes them down, urges Adam to take them off. Between the fractured wrist and the overwhelming sense of newness, Kris doesn't think it's possible to slow things down this time, so he shuts off his brain and takes Adam's cock in his hand as soon as Adam stretches himself over Kris's body again.

They jerk each other off until Kris's wrist starts to _ache_, a dull, horrible pain that throws off any coordination he may have had before.

"Okay, seriously, left hand, totally useless," he breathes out in a rush, and Adam laughs into his mouth.

"I'll make do," Adam says, hint of amusement in his voice, "this once," and then he tugs at Kris's lower lip with his teeth and wraps his fingers around both their cocks, which is—well, it's weird, kind of. Not bad weird, but it's something Kris hadn't really given much thought to, feeling another guy's—_Adam's_—cock hard and rubbing against his own, and it takes Kris a moment to get his head around it.

But it's Adam, and it's—yeah. "You can, uh," Kris says, "whatever."

"Whatever?" Adam asks, raising an eyebrow.

"Fuck," Kris says, and before Adam can ask if he means that as an expletive or as a request, he clarifies, "you can fuck me. We don't have to—"

Adam laughs again, except the sound turns into a groan and then Adam says, "I'm not gonna 'whatever' you until you can hold onto the headboard with both hands," voice hoarse, and tightens his grip, speeds up his strokes. Scratch the weirdness thing, this feels _fantastic_.

"Okay," Kris says, "okay, I can deal with that," and then he tries to nod and his head tips back, and all he can really do is pant.

 

*

 

The next morning, he tries to rub the sleep from his face with the hand that's not resting on Adam's back, and he nearly pops an eye out. Kris is pretty sure his subconscious is not supposed to be this aware he's getting the cast removed in less than five hours.

Adam shifts and slowly blinks to awareness.

"So the cast goes today, right?" Adam says, turning over, hair sticking up in more directions than Kris had ever been close enough to notice before.

"Yeah," Kris says. "Unless I tried to play guitar in my sleep and messed up the healing process. But I'm seventy percent sure that never happened."

"That's a fair amount of certainty," Adam concedes. "You want me to help you shower?"

It sounds completely void of implications, which is bizarre. Kris is scared for a second Adam jerking them both off wasn't enough to fix the awkwardness. "I don't need help showering," he says, gauging Adam's reaction.

"Humor me," Adam says, beginning to grin, and it hits Kris that Adam's been helping him with no explicit implications since Kris had his ridiculous accident. That Adam wants to be _that_ person—that all this hesitation might just be Adam's way of making sure they're on the same page.

"Sure," Kris says, faintly aware it's himself he's yielding to.

He makes a note to show Adam he _is_ that person, no matter how many implications are thrown into the mix.

 

*

 

He gets back to his apartment around seven in the evening, forearm feeling vaguely numb from the prolonged lack of air, and the first thing he does is take a shower, just to win that fight.

It's actually a nice apartment. It always seemed so empty, temporary, the kind of place where you make sure to leave your suitcase somewhere handy. It's a short distance from the bathroom to the kitchen, and he realizes he's never really looked around himself when he walked across the living room.

Looking around—the warm color of the walls, the ridiculously comfy couch his agent picked from a catalogue waiting to be called into a meeting, the stupidly patterned cushions his mom sneakily left there when she came down to LA right after the tour—he thinks, well, it's actually a very nice apartment.

There's no honest reason why he shouldn't keep it.


End file.
